if you thought the housing crisis was getting better in your neighborhood think again it is not over yet i have will tell you why the foreclosure problem is actually getting worse and how the government is contributing to the problem. and he was one of the biggest critics of genetically modified foods now environmental activist mark linus is changing his tone arguing that g.m. foods are actually necessary i had will ask him what changed his mind. and from the days of its inception solitary confinement was meant as a tool to punish or break a person but should this tough tactic be used on people already deemed mentally

unstable one federal judge says no and we will tell you why. it's monday january seventh four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for sound and you're watching our t.v. well it's a new year and there is a new nominee for a new secretary of defense to help meet the challenges of our time i'm proud to announce my choice for two key members of my national security chuck hagel for secretary of defense and john brennan for director of the central intelligence age chuck hagel is the leader that our troops deserve. former republican senator chuck hagel is of nebraska is also a vietnam veteran with two purple hearts but his nomination is making some waves and he's expected to receive

a barrage of harsh questions on several issues during his nomination process now back in two thousand and two despite voting in favor of allowing the united states to invade iraq then senator hagel listed several reasons why it was a bad idea even predicting that many things could go wrong many of you that anti interventionist stance as unpatriotic even today but perhaps the biggest controversies stems from a position he holds that can be summed up by something he said back in two thousand and six he said quote i mean united states senator not an israeli center senator i mean united states senator i support israel but my first interest is i take an oath of office to the constitution of the united states not to a president not to a party not to israel if i go run for senate in israel i'll do that now critics have called this statement an insulting anti jewish slur and over the weekend several republican lawmakers went on the record with their concern over the

prospect of a secretary of defense hagel has long severed his ties with the republican party this is and in your face nomination by the president to all of us who are supportive of israel president seems bound and determined to proceed down this path despite the fact that he calls record is very very troubling on the nation of israel now in terms of this quote anti israel stance and was accused of holding here he's been here he is speaking on this very issue back in two thousand and six united states will remain committed to defending israel our relationship with israel is a special and historic. but it need not and cannot be at the expense of our arab and muslim relationships. so essentially hagel is saying that the united states has many relationships and while the one with israel is special and important we need to remember that other ones are important to do people really disagree with this it is of course important that any one pick to head up the

department of defense should be questioned vigorously about past statements and positions but when the most controversial aspect of a person one that could potentially threaten his nomination has to do with wanting to put serving the united states above serving israel i think it's worth asking precisely what our relationship with israel is what are the goals and for how much longer will voicing concerns about that relationship mean an automatic stain on your record. on to some financial news now bank of america has agreed to pay more than ten billion dollars to mortgage giants fannie mae to settle claims of mortgages gone bad dealing with mostly with loans issued by countrywide and it was all the big news today bank of america had reached a settlement with fannie mae to resolve claims related to residential mortgage loans ten point three billion is what bank of america owes fannie mae roughly seven billion in loans it will buy back to is going to pay three point six billion to

fannie mae it's going to buy back about six point seven billion in loans that it and its countrywide bank units sold to fannie mae now in addition to this settlement ten major u.s. banks and mortgage companies came to another agreement today after months of back and forth haggling with federal regulators over improper actions related to foreclosures across this country we're talking about banks like j.p. morgan chase also bank of america wells fargo citi group p. and c. financial services. now the big banks agreed to pay eight point five billion dollars to make up for widespread abuse that led to thousands of americans being forced out of their homes when they in fact should have been allowed to keep those homes now here's a little bit of a breakdown for you three point three billion will go directly to eligible homeowners who were foreclosed upon in two thousand and nine in two thousand and ten and five point two billion will be used as assistance and loan modifications and reductions of principal balances now despite settlements like these today and

another one in two thousand and eleven the foreclosure crisis is far from over and in some cases continues to get worse to talk more about this and he went as a director of economic research at the reason foundation hey there anthony you're joining us from los angeles is. normally east coast but the enjoying this sunny southern california california of course a place that has seen a record number of foreclosures so let's talk about this this is being touted as a major multibillion dollar settlement but critics call it nothing more than another big win for the big banks i want to get your take here. well i actually sort of see this is when win win all the way around the banks definitely a win here because the cost the independent review of going through each an individual foreclosure to see whether or not it was improper or not it was costing them a lot of money but what they were finding was that actually there was not as many

improper foreclosures as originally thought and a lot of the practices that the we that have been highly criticized the regulators were finding that it wasn't as many as a regionally perceived to the regulators also kind of wanted to get out of this because they found most of the problems that they were going to find so it's a win for the regulators and i think consumers win here too because we need to move past the litigation portion of getting out of the crisis to actually begin to create some certainty for financial institutions that they know what their costs are going forward so they can actually engage in lending again you know what anthony let me get in here because that is an excuse used time and time again we heard it by the president we've heard it by so many leaders here in this country who say you know let's just leave that harks past behind us that we can move on so we can begin to heal but the fact is so many of these banks have not been held responsible and eight point five billion dollars may sound like a lot of money but between you know these ten to twelve banks it's not that much as

some of these people who were kicked out of their homes you know might see up to one hundred twenty five thousand dollars but the fact is the amount of money that people lost here because of this mismanagement doesn't come close to what's being paid out because christine i couldn't agree with you more the idea that people were forced and probably other homes violates everything that really america stands for the rule of law on private property rights the problem is is that this whole process this whole litigation process hasn't really been focused on those individuals if you look at this deal that the ten banks are signing onto the deal that was signed in two thousand and eleven in favor of two thousand and eleven and even bank of america still. a lot of this money is going towards homeowners today that are struggling to make their payments and not previous borrowers the reason why i think that we need to actually sort of close the books on this actually move forward is because this allows for money to actually be given to people who were improperly foreclosed on the regulators have been pushing and digging and digging

to try and find all the people that really were improperly foreclosed on and what they sort of determine is that they think that they found all of them or at least most of them and that they can create a pool of money from the settlement to then be able to distribute some of that money to those individuals it's really interesting when we talk about sort of what's been going on over the last few years to try to write these wrongs some new programs have been sort of set up to deal with this i want to look at one of them and this is brought up an investigation by pro publica the major program set up to deal you know without promise that the government made of compensating victims of the crisis this is a program called the independent foreclosure review and according to public eye they found out it really isn't that independent at all some of the banks themselves actually had a hand in conducting some of these reviews talk about this aspect of it and they i mean what seems to be here mounting evidence of the banks deliberately not changing their ways. well you got two things that are going on in this whole discussion of

foreclosures we've got the people today who are struggling to make payments and are looking at foreclosures and that's a foreclosure way that's getting worse that's going to get worse this year that you're mentioning sort of the top and then we've got people who are probably that possibly were improperly foreclosed on and that's the independent review they're talking about and these are people that were improperly foreclosed on or potentially in two thousand and nine and two thousand and ten and that independent review was costing a lot of money in the banks actually were really involved and it really wasn't that independent and it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do this settlement in this basically replaces that whole process and it creates a pool of money that will be distributed to any that are have eligible claims to actually be able to make the payments out as opposed to one by one process is that we're taking months and months and even two years costing money that was going to consultants as opposed to the victims so i think that replacing the program is a good idea whether or not this this replacement is the best of the replacements

what is up for debate a lot of the details haven't been released but but the critiques that pro publica found i think were really accurate getting rid of the independent review was a good step but i want to talk about just sort of what we're seeing today in this country regarding foreclosures and take a look at some hard numbers here this is according to realty track from january two thousand and six talk tobar of two thousand and twelve there were about ten million foreclosure starts about half of those actually ended up being foreclosures and as of the end of the year just last week really december two thousand and twelve there were fourteen million underwater homeowners let me just get from you real quick anthony the story behind these numbers. well i think one of the things that we've seen is as people have not been able to make payments over months and months and months they get to this point of why i continue to put money into a home that i just you know i'm not. i'm not going to have any equity and so i

probably just want to walk away from it and as that has continued as we've gotten further away from the crisis we've seen more and more people walk away from their homes so with mortgages with housing prices continuing to stay low because we were in a housing bubble and we're not going to go back to the housing bubble homeowners are beginning to realize that we're just not going to go back to two thousand and six prices we're going to have a lot of these homes that are just going to remain underwater and as a result there's incredible fears that in two thousand and thirteen we're going to thousand and fourteen that sort of mentality of i'm just never going to have any ok.d. in this home why continue to pay in a home that's going to remain underwater well can set in for more and more people and we'll see an increase in the number of people walking away from their homes and therefore foreclosures very interesting stuff anthony wind as a director of economic research at the reason foundation joining us from los angeles thanks so much. well one of the most outspoken influential activists who helped spur the anti g.m.o.

movement has changed his mind mark linus says in fact dmoz are not a living pollution nor will they turn what we eat into so-called frankenfood the reason for his change of heart he says is science i want to apologize for having spent several years ripping up jim crow and i'm also sorry that i helped start the antigen movement back in the ninety's and by assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can and should be used to benefit the environment. as you might imagine this is spring as several others who jumped on the anti g.m.o. train to stand their ground and breathed new life into a years long debate about genetically modified foods so we were curious to find out more about why some such a prominent outspoken critic of g.m.o. has had it changed his mind so we have him here now mark linus joins us from london hey there mark this is a huge want to eighty here give me the nuts and bolts of your reasoning well

basically my change of heart comes from the fact that i spent a long time studying the science on biotechnology which was preceded by studying this on climate change so basically i moved from big somebody who was a writing about environmental issues from an environmentalist perspective to somebody who is trying to study the sun in order to be more effective in talking about climate change and that's a very strong consensus on climate change which comes from the scientific community and when i discovered that there was the same sort of consensus in the scientific community that jim i was with safe i basically had a debate as my views on that. we spoke about your change of heart to alexis baden meyer with the organic consumers association and i want to play for you what she says and then how do you respond there's no evidence that genetically modified food is safe to eat in the united states we don't safety tested we consider it substantially equivalent basically the same as normal food and there are no safety tests done so you're saying there's no evidence that g.m.

is are not safe she's saying there's no evidence that it is safe to talk a little bit about you know how we get past this and you know if what you say is correct show the people that it is in fact safe. well what you're saying is actually not correct there's been tens of millions of dollars worth of tests done and tested on every new product that reaches the market in a year these tests are all done independently and they done by independent scientists so that's simply not true and the point is so you can ask for evidence that something is. it's safe and it's very difficult to to prove a negative the point is if we can do all of the tests and has been testing for many years on all the different chimo products which are in the market there's never been any evidence of home so that comes a point where you just say ok fine the jury is in this dispute is not frankenfood it's not scary him it was new fifteen years ago but now it's not new and actually it's complete except one completely so i guess mark what led you sort of all those years ago to make this such a huge issue it was something that you really spoke out against and really became

one of the godfathers of this movement what is it that you saw or read that made you anti g.m. that first. well you have to understand this is bound up with a whole lot of cultural values stuff so most of this debate tends to use to demonize some of these companies like monsanto for example people are very obsessed with monsanto being this kind of demonic presence on the corporate stage and a lot of the anti capitalist type protest that you see the gym most think it's really part of the main battle against big corporations so a lot of this is very values based stuff the organic lobby of course is very anti g.m.o. because they believe it's a natural so the whole lot of stuff all wrapped up in here with a very deep seated level and it's not going to be easy to to reframe that but again if you come at this from a scientific spectrum and you look at the evidence there really isn't any evidence at all that we've got nothing to worry about and in fact these are potentially very useful technologies which we can use to help the environment and that's something

which is really really changed my mind so what about those people margo who you know worry that you've actually just arranged you know a behind the scenes deal with monsanto that they're paying you to be their new spokesperson their all the all powerful monsanto you can assure us that you have been paid off right. in my my payment for giving that speech was like they gave me a glass you know one of those things that you get when you're a speaker and the chairman of the conference has given me a ram which is the size of which is a shape metal shape because it lives of the road and has a farm just off the road nike shoes as well but other than that i've not heard anything for months on so well the biotechnology industry in general and if they contacted me i would tell them to go away i'm not interested. and i know let's get into a little science here i know this is confusing to a lot of people but i know one of the things that you've said in the past is that g.m. is actually just another form of mutation breeding but doesn't retention breeding sort of bring about its own set of problems. well what you're talking about is the technique of mutagenesis which is in juicing mutations and in plants and all of

that to get them to develop traits which you then find desirable an example is that the weight which is thought which is used in past or during which it was used was both removed genesis a long time ago and it's something which has been accepted for a long time but the point is that g.m. is actually much more precise because you identify the genes that you want and you put them into the plant and you then you check it very carefully for safety and so on and so forth with new genesis and standard conventional plant breeding which that when excess including organic farmers you you basically mess up the whole genome and just see what happens there is no safety testing at all so actually i think you can make a strong case that g.m. foods are probably safer than their conventional counterparts do you think you're going to have a quite a few people kind of following you in this new opinion i mean what i have people's reaction been well it's been fascinating actually i was expecting a you know bag full of hate mail but and it's been after medicine went to the standard accusation are probably taking money from one side of her but i would say

that's been outweighed one hundred times by supportive tweets e-mails and just the number of times that things been downloaded it's probably tracking about one hundred forty thousand times now in just a few days and you know that's a kind of viral internet phenomenon which i had no idea i just wrote a speech and i gave a speech and put up a blog post but you know this is also struck a chord with a lot of people that are also realizing in a similar saying this way that there's simply nothing behind all these g.m.o. fears and it's time to get on with using the science properly well it certainly is an interesting debate that as you say it's been going on for years i still to know and appreciate you sharing your views like linus environmental campaigner and author of the god species and the fact. so so last here on r t a federal judge rules against putting mentally unstable prisoners in solitary confinement his reasoning coming up next. the so.

the so. let me let me i want i wouldn't let me ask your point. here on this board is what

we have in the bank we have our nights out the so. tell me that you are doing this right on the banks thing there again you're in a situation where i mean i don't worry to talk about the arrangement to me. there are some changes ahead for mentally ill prisoners in this country and two states so far taking steps to keep these inmates out of solitary confinement in california the department of corrections has already prepped more than fifty prisoners to move out of solitary and into the general population and in indiana a federal judge has ruled that the department of corrections in that state violated prisoners eighth amendment rights by not providing adequate mental health care by subjecting them to solitary confinement and in many cases worsening their illness i want to talk about the implications of this with bonnie curran as with the american

friends services committee she's also the director of the prison watch project. so a bonnie the indiana case was brought about by the a.c.l.u. talk a little bit about the outcome of the case and what you think it means on a larger scale. well the issue of isolation is something that the american friends service committee has been monitoring and u.s. prisons since one nine hundred eighty six. we first saw political people political activists jailhouse lawyer. islamic militants put in isolation and then in the ninety s. they began building whole supermax prisons to hold the mentally ill who had been released to the streets with the closing of the federal hospitals. so this this is. huge thing for activists for prisoners who are family members. the use of solitary confinement

for mentally ill prisoners is something you can't give me a good reason for yeah it's really interesting because when it when using solitary a lot of these departments of corrections say it's either used to try to get more information out of these people who aren't willing to do so when they're in the general population or it's used to keep quote unquote dangerous prisoners away from other ones talk a little bit about these arguments and how you know truthful they are when we're talking about solitary and its use in this well that's that's the argument that the department of corrections gives us. when you know when i hear from people in draper utah or at tamms illinois which also just. it is from people who are saying i am mentally ill and i have been mentally ill and i'm not being

treated. some of the conditions of confinement are so awful that they come down with skin rashes they start cutting themselves other conditions are so clean that they're in. boxes completely isolate it they can't hear it's cool it's cold no touched or church. and it's a technique that the united states uses not just in u.s. prisons but it also uses in prisons open season we can go and and rape and guantanamo bay and i really have that's interesting that you brought that up because military prisons as well and here at r.t. we talk a lot about private first class bradley manning who right is accused of you know leaking classified documents to the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks and this is a person who certainly you cannot use the you know dangerous prisoner argument on this is a you know five foot two or five foot three young man. and he was in solitary

confinement for eight months before being moved into a different military prison talk a little bit about bani solitary in general in this country and just how it's come to this point where it's used and overused. it's used in overused i think it was an experiment that started with my generation of activists when they found themselves in prison the sixty's the seventy's even the eighty they will put in solitary confinement. it was an experiment that worked well enough so that departments of corrections throughout the country began building with federal dollars. supermax prisons. bradley manning. has brought one and scott barrier at the young man and his wife were kept in iranian. solitary confinement have brought

tremendous blissett the to the use but it is used all over the country it's used for mentally ill it's also used politically or. young black gang members it's used to federal government has what they call communications management units where if you're islamic you're going to be put in small group isolation you're not going to be allowed out in general population well it certainly is interesting and just real briefly we're almost out of time but what will the challenges be indiana and california certainly a star but there are forty eight other states you know they use this method what's the biggest challenge to getting all fifty states for making changes for people to understand that there is no good reason for extended isolation there just isn't happening all right bonnie harness that with the american friends services committee and also the director of the prison watch project appreciate you being

with us this is a topic we really try to focus on and stay on top of what's going on with us around the country thank you. all right everyone that's going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america or check out our website our two dot com slash u.s.a. and you can of course follow me on twitter you can find me at christine for his out and we're going to be back here in thirty minutes.

joining me on a journey to the heart of the kremlin to place is hidden from the tourists you're going to meet some real crime insiders although they may not be the usual newsmakers you see on t.v. .

good afternoon welcome to capital account i'm more in the store here in washington d.c. these are your headlines for friday december twenty first two thousand and twelve today is a good time to reflect on this.